Businesses often conduct unnecessary meetings to get answers that could easily befound over an email. Such meetings are a waste of productive time that could otherwise be spent on doing important business tasks. However, this does not mean that you should never conduct meetings; rather you should hold efficient meetings that do not waste your employees’ time, and that lead to meaningful outcomes.

Here are a few tips that can help you drive efficient business meetings.

1. Decide whether you need a meeting
Holding a meeting just for the sake of conducting it is not the right approach. This is usually justan hour-long discussion with no meaningful outcomes or actions. Thus, it is important that you find out if you really need a meeting, and will it be worth the attendees’ time. Organise a meeting only if it is necessary and cannot be replaced with an email.

2. Have less participants
According to the Harvard Business Review, bigger meetings are less effective. As the number of attendees increases, people become more reluctant to participate. However, with less participants, everyone gets a chance to speak and contribute. You can use meeting attendance tracking software to invite your employees to the meeting.

3. Have a clear agenda
The key to running an efficient meeting is to ensure that everyone knows why they have gathered and what they want to accomplish. You can achieve this by creating a well-designed agenda and sharing it with participants ahead of the meeting so that they can come prepared.

4. Limit interrupting
When you design an agenda and include all that needs to be decided, make sure to mention the people responsible to lead each agenda item. This will provide clarity on what needs to be accomplishedduring the meeting and by whom, and will limit interruptions by other attendees.

5. Ensure equal participation
Harvard Business Review reports that people who hold back usually have the best viewpoint on the conversation. If you have quieter people in your team, inform them beforehand that you want them to participate in the meeting.

6. Take minutes of meetings
Meeting minutes are crucial for an efficient meeting since they provide an overview of takeaways, action items, and people responsible for those action items. Without meeting minutes, it can be difficult to find out what was the outcome of the meeting and track its progress. Recording meeting minutes manually can be time-consuming and intimidating; however, you can leverage meeting minutes software to automate and streamline the process of creating and distributing minutes of meetings.

meetingTRAC for Efficient Meeting Management
meetingTRAC is smart and easy meeting management software that automates scheduling and agenda templates, allowing minutes and actions to be recorded and distributed electronically in real time.

meetingTRAC lightens the load on businesses, clubs, and community group volunteers by saving time, reducing stress, and empowering clubs and organisations to get on with what really matters. In addition, meetingTRAC helps save money in preparing, running, and reporting on meetings.

meetingTRAC meeting minutes software is easy to integrate into any organisation, can run on any computer or mobile device, and does not require any software download.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial to explore how meetingTRAC can help you drive efficient meetings.